Sign Language Plus – a FILM!!

What are sign languages? Sign languages are a visual spatial system of communication used as the primary means of communication by communities of deaf people around the world ASL, as used in Anglophone North America, is completely different from BSL Indeed, there are 114 sign languages in the world

Knowledge of Sign Languages Although sign languages have existed from at least 2 millenia, it is only in the past 30 years that they have been studied Early studied focussed on overcoming oralist biases Showed that sign languages have complex morphology, phonology, etc. And that equally complex ideas can be communicated

Debates For > 100 years, debates about optimal education Until 20 years ago, still strong oralist traditions Still in some places, but now the pendulum has swung so far that there is a movement for signing only communities And, resistance to interventions

Like any other language… Requires a community to be used – need a critical mass of users Until about 30 years ago, no critical mass in Nicaragua Then, children brought together into a school Developed a home sign, which then turned into a pidgin, and then a creole Now a complex languages

What is a home sign? Gestural communicative systems That share many structural properties with sign languages

What are the structural properties of sign language? Signs have an abrupt onset, movement, and closure Made up of a discrete number of units that are combined and recombined These can yield an infinite number of sentences It can be used to talk about the here and now, as well as abstract topics & events displaced in time Signs can be classified in terms of hand configuration, place of articulation and manner of movement Similar to place, manner, and voicing in speech

Signs can also be assigned to grammatical class, like spoken words Individual signs have meanings, which can be changed by adding morphemes, as in spoken languages There are syntactic – word order – rules for combining signs

Preference for sign over gesture Ursula Hildebrandt and David Corrina Recorded 2 native signers either signing or gesturing Showed the recordings to hearing infants of 6 and 12 months Infants of 6 months showed a preference for sign over gesture Infants of 12 months did not Consider this like the language specific tuning seen in speech perception

Petitto & Marentette 3 hearing, 2 deaf infants Regularity of onset of babbling Regularity of onset of first word (10-14 mos) –Petitto disputes the claims that the onset of sign is earlier. She argues babbling is being confused with semanticity. Initial signs simplified just as is speech Regularity of onset of two-sign and two-word productions (16-22 months) Initially, little morphological modification but evident by months

Differences in children

Petitto, 2001 New study 6 hearing infants 6-12 months 3 exposed to only sign, 3 to only speech Speech exposed infants showed only one type of gestural babbling Sign exposed infants showed two Same characteristics as in original study To see characteristics of babbling in sign, go to:

Evidence for a critical period in sign Newport, et. al., 1990 studies three groups in terms of age of first language acquisition –Native signers –Early signers acquiring at 4-6 years –Later signers, acquiring after 12 years She also divided them into years of signing experience ( 50 years) Age of first acquisition most important –Vocabulary size not that different –Word order not that different –But only the native signers were highly consistent in their use of morphology. Early signers intermediate. Late signers very inconsistent.

Home Sign Deaf children raised without sign spontaneously produce signs They use these to communicate about the here and now and things displaced in time and space These signs are similar in form and shape to those produced in sign languages around the world Specific signs are used as elements in sign sequences The sequences have a grammatical form that is ergative - - different from those of the speech heard

In “ergative” languages…. 1.The object is placed before the verb –The mouse ate the cheese  “cheese eat” 2.In intransitive sentences the agent is placed before the verb –The mouse is going  “mouse go” 3.Actors from transitive sentences are usually omitted (as in 1 above). If included, the actor is in final position –The mouse ate the cheese  “eat mouse”

The appearance of spontaneous sign The elements that make it language like And the emergence of a word order that is unlike that in the modelled language All support the “resiliencey” of language as long as there is an interlocuter Some liken home sign to a pidgin language

Motherese in Sign Motherese in sign Masataka article shows that ID Sign has: repetition longer duration more exaggerated movements